When will we ever learn...

Why...

Is it a surprise if, four hours after ending the evening with Vodka shots and jelly babies, I have a hangover you could land a Jumbo Jet on? The one saving grace about over indulgence on holiday is you can skulk about in a dark room till midday… when even hangovers that make your hair hurt begins to subside. But it seems there is a moment on every vacation when even perfectly sane people have some sort of synapse malfunction and revert to being teenagers. My saintly in-laws last year suddenly realised they had never jumped fully clothed into a pool and to their immediate left stood such an inviting one.... splash!

...and another thing

My late father took my mother, sister and I one evening to a mountain top restaurant on a remote Greek island that could only be reached via donkey. After dinner we were supposed to walk back down. However my father had had one too many Ouzos and insisted he return downhill with the donkey and that I follow him. A memory flickered into my mind. On the journey up we never encountered any donkeys coming down, only the returning tourists and donkey trainers.

“Excuse me but how do the donkeys actually get back….” was cut short when the muleteer gave my nag a sharp smack on its arse and it shot off towards the edge of the cliff like some lemming.

In sheer horror one of my flip flops fell from my foot and caught in the moonlight, I watched it spiral down 1,000ft  to the sea below.  The return ‘path’ cut from the cliff face was no wider than an I-Pad giving each donkey a mincing gait as they shot off down the hill. (They knew there was a treat at the bottom so they ran).

I still have a photo of my father at the end of the ride, face whiter than Casper the Ghost.

...and another thing

Every holiday a taxi driver manages to stiff me on the short journey from the airport to the resort. Once there my skin, on its first exposure to summer sun, turns without fail a fetching shade of condemned veal.

 I gamely eat eye of toad bruschetta, barbecued ear of newt, pasta with bat droppings or whatever the locals convince me is their most famous dish and wonder why I have to reach for the Imodium the next morning.

 

And yet I gladly repeat this every year…

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